‘I hitchhiked around Europe as a penniless teenager in the 1960s – there was danger but also less fear’

Author and explorer Bridget Ashton (now 79) spent her time off from teacher training travelling Europe and north Africa

Bridget Ashton on her return from hitchhiking through Spain

Bridget Ashton

‘In 1963, at the age of 19, I was one of three hundred girls at an all-female teacher training college in Hereford. We were being trained to be schoolteachers but at the same time, my friends and I were learning about hitchhiking.

With a sixpenny road map, we would explore England, Scotland and Wales at the weekends and during half term. We were slowly learning how to go abroad with very little money.